Learn more about MIT App Inventor.
This code is designed to be run in Google's App Engine. MIT runs a public instance that all are welcome to use to build App Inventor Applications. You do not need to compile or use this code if you wish to build MIT App Inventor applications.
We provide this code for reference and for experienced people who wish to operate their own App Inventor instance and/or contribute to the project.
This code is tested and known to work with Java 7.
The best way to go about integrating changes in App Inventor is to start a conversation in the Open Source forum about whatever you intend to change or add.
We use very brief and informal design documents with descriptions of the proposed changes and screenshots of how the functionality would look like and behave, in order to gather as much feedback from the community, as early as possible. We generally use shared Google docs for this (with permissions to add comments), but any format that is accessible from a web browser (and allows comments) would do.
If you have skipped this step and have gone ahead and made your changes already, feel free to open a pull request, but don't be too surprised if we ask you to go back and document it in a design document. Remember that the main goal of doing this is to gather as much feedback, as early as possible. We will also possibly ask you to put an instance with your changes on appspot, and provide a modified Companion app (if that applies) so that reviewers can play with the changes before looking at the source.
Check out our open source site to find a lot more information about the project and how to contribute to it.
This is a quick guide to get started with the sources. More detailed instructions can be found here, a slide show can be seen here, and all the documentation for the project is available in our site.
You will need a full Java JDK (version 7, preferably from Oracle; JRE is not enough) and Python to compile and run the servers.
You will also need a copy of the App Engine SDK for Java and ant.
If you want to make changes to the source, you are going to need to run an automated test suite, and for that you will also need phantomjs. Have a look at the testing section for more information.
Note: Java 8 will work locally, and it is also supported by AppEngine, but you may need to specify your runtime if you want to use appspot. Also note that certain Java 8 features, such as lambda expressions, are not supported on Android, so please don't use them in your changes to the source code.
Consider forking the project if you want to make changes to the sources. If you simply want to run it locally, you can simply clone it.
If you decide to fork, follow the instructions given by github. After that you can clone your own copy of the sources with:
$ git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USER_NAME/appinventor-sources.git
Make sure you change YOUR_USER_NAME to your user name.
Configuring a remote pointing to this repository is also a good idea if you are forking:
$ cd appinventor-sources
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/mit-cml/appinventor-sources.git
Finally, you will also have to make sure that you are ignoring files that need ignoring:
$ cp sample-.gitignore .gitignore
App Inventor uses Blockly, the web-based visual programming editor from Google, as a core part of its editor. Blockly core is made available to App Inventor as a git submodule. The first time after forking or cloning the repository, you will need to perform the following commands:
$ git submodule update --init
For developers who will be working on Blocky within the context of App Inventor, the preferred checkout procedure is to perform a git submodule init, edit the .git/config file to use the read/write SSH URL for MIT CML's Blockly fork instead of the public read-only HTTPS URL assumed by default (to support pushing changes). After changing .git/config, a git submodule update will pull the repository.
If you need to switch back to a branch that does contains the Blockly and Closure Library sources in the tree, you will need to run the command:
$ git submodule deinit .
to clear out the submodules before switching branches. When switching back, you will need to repeat the initialization and update procedure above.
Before compiling the code, an auth key is needed. You can create one by running the following commands:
$ cd appinventor
$ ant MakeAuthKey
Once the key is in place, type the following to compile (from the appinventor folder):
$ ant
You will see a lot of stuff in the terminal and after a few minutes (it can take from 2 to 10 minutes, depending on your machine specs) you should see a message saying something like Build Successful.
There are two servers in App Inventor, the main server that deals with project information, and the build server that creates apk files. More detailed information can be found in the App Inventor Developer Overview document.
$ your-appengine-SDK-folder/bin/dev_appserver.sh
--port=8888 --address=0.0.0.0 appengine/build/war/
Make sure you change your-appengine-SDK-folder to wherever in your hard drive you have placed the App Engine SDK.
The build server can be run from the terminal by typing:
$ cd appinventor/buildserver
$ ant RunLocalBuildServer
Note that you will only need to run the build server if you are going to build an app as an apk. You can do all the layout and programming without having the build server running, but you will need it to download the apk.
You should now be up and running; you can test this by pointing your browser to:
http://localhost:8888
The automated tests depend on Phantomjs. Make sure you install it and add it to your path. After that, you can run all tests by typing the following in a terminal window:
$ ant tests
Contact us through our Google Group or G+ community.